Running Red

by Jack Bates

  “These catastrophic events have only begun to materialize in the last few months,” Superior Six says. “You’ve been on the road, removed from these challenges we’ve been facing.”

  “So we are at war,” I say.

  “The balance of humanity is in our hands,” Superior Six says. He flashes his anchorman smile. It is becoming clear that the real enemy here is ego. This is a war for power, to control what is left of mankind.

  “Shouldn’t we be out there eradicating the runners instead of fighting with ourselves?”

  LC Allison puts a hand on my arm. “We have people working on that,” she says. “They tell us we are close to developing a vaccination for the survivors.”

  “What about those already infected?” I ask.

  Silence is my only answer.

  “The infected are already dead,” Superior Two says. “Just as the fungus attacked and killed the carrier ant, likewise does it do the same to humans.”

  “They’re changing,” I say. Again, there is skepticism on their faces.

  “Ms. Willette has noticed several physical and behavioral changes in the infected,” LC Allison says. “It’s one of the reasons I requested this video link.”

  Superior Four puts on a pair of glasses. She leans back in her chair. “Can she elaborate?” she asks. Her fingers move over a flat tablet in front of her. Two screens down, Superior Six glances down at something on the table in front of him. He taps whatever it is several times while trying to watch me and read whatever is in front of him. I’m pretty sure they are texting one another on their portable screens.

  “I first noticed it several days ago,” I say. “There was a runner who tried to latch onto me. Before this attack, other runners I encountered did that run-at-you charge where they tried to tackle their prey.”

  “What was different this time?” Superior Three asks.

  “I felt like he was studying me.”

  “Preposterous,” Superior Two says. His British inflections are flaring. “The fungus attacks the nervous system. It controls the runner’s muscles and directs it to a target.”

  “How does the fungus know what to attack?” I ask.

  “What do you mean?” Superior Five asks.

  “If the runner is dead, and the eyes have no function, how does the runner know where to attack? Does it smell us? Does it sense us?”

  Superior Six clears his throat and leans forward. “The fungus slowly takes control of the nervous system. It somehow directs the carrier by controlling a part of the brain, giving it specific impulses to do specific things.”

  “Like the fungus originally did with ants. It drove them to a specific leaf at a specific time of the day, and the ant latched onto the leaf and the spore stalk grew out of its head and released its seeds. I know all of this from the public service announcements. What I want to know is, how did the ant know it was the right leaf. Did it see it? Smell it? Hear it? What senses did the ant still have to know where to go? What kept it from wandering around in circles or smacking into a rock?”

  “I told you,” Six says. “The fungus controlled the ant.”

  “So the fungus had to somehow tap into the optic nerves or use the antennae or something to know where the tree was.”

  The Superiors scoff at me.

  “What you’re suggesting,” Superior Three says. He points a fat, twitching finger at me. “What you are suggesting is that the runners are thinking.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m suggesting. The fungus is learning how to use our brains. It’s why humans don’t have the spore stalk growing out of their heads. It’s why, after the latching, the carrier collapses into that mound of mossy mold that releases the spores. The fungus is burrowing into the brain. It’s learning how to use the carrier.”

  They click their teeth, shake their heads, wave their hands at me. I am giving them something else to consider when all they want to do is battle the Guard. LC Allison gives me a soft, gentle kick under the table.

  I speak directly to the screens. “The day after I was attacked on the road I saw a runner trapped in a house trying to remember how to open a door.”

  Again there is more scoffing.

  “Later that night, it got out and tried to latch onto me.”

  “Someone let it out,” Superior Three says.

  “No, sir,” I say. “It was trapped in a house, and that night it was out.”

  “Impossible!” Five says.

  “I have witnesses,” I say. “They are here at Camp G.”

  The Superiors grow quiet.

  “They are here,” LC Allison says. “I can arrange for you to speak to them.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Three says. He is sitting back in his chair, slowly swiveling it side to side.

  “There’s more,” I say. I look at LC Allison. She nods for me to continue. “The runners are mutating.”

  “How so?” Superior Six asks.

  “They are growing mandibles.”

  “Can she say that again?” Four asks. “It sounded like she said ‘mandibles.’”

  “She did,” Five says. “I am sending you images of some of the latest intel on the runners, Four.” Four’s monitor switches over to a shaky video of a runner with opening and closing jaws. They click or snap in and out of place.

  “We have only recently received this intelligence,” Five says.

  “So you can see the runners are changing physically,” I say. “Why won’t you believe me when I say their behavior is changing?”

  None of them speak. None of them look at me. All of them are tapping on the screens they have lying in front of them. One by one the screens go back to blue. Superior Six smiles at us.

  “We will reconvene tomorrow,” he says. His screen goes black.

  “They don’t want to know,” I say. “They’re more concerned about their war with the Guard.”

  “Let’s talk outside,” LC Allison says. We leave the conference room.

  There are new guards in the halls. Like the ones on duty before them, they snap to attention and salute.

  LC Allison and I walk across the grounds towards my apartment.

  “All they want to do is fight their war,” I say.

  “It’s why I brought you here,” LC Allison says. “They need to know.”

  “So now they know,” I say. “What next?”

  “It will take some time, but I’m hoping once they realize the runners are a growing threat, the two sides will stop the infighting and return to facing the real enemy.”

  “The runners?” I ask.

  “Of course,” LC Allison says.

  At the bottom of the stairs, I finally ask her what’s been on my mind since we arrived. “Is my sister okay?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I wish I did.”

  “How did you know she was here?”

  LC Allison looks around. We are the only two outside the apartment. She opens a pocket on her shirt and removes a manila envelope. It isn’t until I am upstairs in my apartment that I open it. Inside is a photo print of me, Jess, and Charlotte celebrating my niece’s fourth birthday. It makes me realize that Charlotte is now five. I flip it over and my heart stops. There’s something written on the back.

  “Robbie—if you’re reading this, I’m sorry. Don’t come looking for us.”

  What she doesn’t know is, I will.

  Sixteen

  When it became clear to my mom and dad that I wasn’t going to make it through school the traditional way, they enrolled me in what was being called “the alternative school.” What it boiled down to was, they were sending me to the Island of Misfit Toys. Even the teachers had that feel of being cast-offs.

  I met Lane at the RHAE School. The letters stood for Rockford Heights Alternative Education. It was known as Ray. Our mascot was a smiling sun wearing Ray Ban sunglasses. I guess when it first opened, a cereal company tried to sue the district for copyright infringement and the glasses got changed to a pair of aviator glasses, or it h
ad more sunrays jutting off the circle. I don’t know. I never understood why an alternative school needed a mascot. It’s not like we had any sports teams. All we had was a sometimes debate team.

  Lane was in four of the five classes I needed to take at Ray. When there’re fewer than 200 kids in the whole building, you’re going to have a lot of repeats in your blocks. Lane was in my math, history, science, and English classes. The only hour we didn’t see each other, he was in some lame woodworking class and I was in a computer class. Lane made horse-head bookends and I practiced making web pages. It was hard to say who was getting the more marketable skills.

  Our first date was a study date. Our math teacher had suggested we get together in small groups before a major midterm exam and study our asses off. Jean was like that. She talked shit, but she didn’t take any. One time this girl blurted out in class, “Come on, seriously, Jean. When am I ever going to need to add numbers?”

  Jean’s face had flushed. I think she was angry at the girl’s stupidity more than at the girl. “How about when you’re trying to balance your checkbook? Or when you’re counting your money? Oh, wait, never mind. You won’t have any money because you won’t be able to count. Just hire me and I’ll do all your counting for you for the rest of your life.”

  Lane was the kind of guy that everyone instantly says, “He’s bad news,” when they see him. He liked to wear a black leather jacket all the time. His clothing was a tad on the metro-sexual side: skinny jeans, wide striped tee-shirts, Chuck Taylor high tops. He sometimes wore a lavender bandana around his neck. On his right arm he had a tat of a pair of cherries with sparks popping off the stems; underneath the fruit was “ch-ch-cherry bomb.” The teachers hated him.

  But he made me laugh, and sometimes that’s all I needed.

  I met him at a local fast-food restaurant. He had no money, so I bought him a kid’s meal just so he wouldn’t get tossed out for loitering. I don’t think we studied at all. We sat and watched the kids on the plastic playscape. Every so often Lane would yell out, “Bradley. I’m not kidding. We have to go home now.” He’d wait, and when a kid came out of the tube slide he’d ask if the kid saw a little fat boy inside the tunnels.

  “He’s wearing a shirt that says ‘I eat monkey poo, do you?’ and he has on orange sneakers.”

  The little kids would shake their heads. Lane would act all angry and yell, “Bradley, you get your ass out here now!”

  It was stupid and it was obnoxious, but I marveled at how spontaneous Lane was, how smart of a wit he had. It wasn’t like this was taboo. There were shows on TV of people pranking strangers all the time. There were even movies of the same kind of foolishness: Jackass, Borat, Punked. And if that wasn’t enough, you could go on YouTube and see the exact same kind of things done by guys just like Lane.

  I knew my mom and dad would never go for him. They both still harbored the idea that I was going through a phase, that I would snap out of it and become some doe-eyed little princess. After my sister Jess graduated from college, she got pregnant from a one-night stand. It tore my folks up. Jess had no intentions of marrying the guy. I think they began looking at me as their last chance to do it right: get me through school, get me married, and settle me down.

  There was no way Lane fit that part of the puzzle they named Robin.

  And it wasn’t some authority-defiance disorder thing. I genuinely loved Lane. It drove my parents nuts. There was never just one incident that caused their hatred of Lane. He was never a part of their plan for me.

  Shortly before the outbreak of Balzini’s Rash, my mom’s great-aunt died. I had never met the woman, but apparently, as a child, my mother had spent her summers at this aunt’s house up on Little Traverse Bay. If you’re at all familiar with the area, you know that it is a place known for being a playground for the rich. The houses are mammoth, and are considered cottages. When people talk about the area, they always add, “Well, that’s all that Chicago money.” I don’t know if my mom’s great-aunt was from Chicago, but apparently she had a lot of money.

  There was no way my mother was going to miss the funeral. She and my dad made plans to go up north for it. I told them I couldn’t go because I had a bunch of tests coming up and I had a paper to write. It was probably overkill, but my mom wasn’t going to get into a shouting match with me over it. She did say I would have to go down into the city to stay with Jess while they were gone.

  That was fine, I said. I packed a duffle and set it by the door.

  “Put it in the car,” my dad said. “We’re dropping you off.”

  “Oh, that’s cool,” I said. “But Lane is coming over to take me.”

  My dad grabbed the shoulder strap of the bag. “The hell he is,” he said. He had it on his shoulder before I could grab it.

  “If you think I’m not going to see Lane while you and Mom are up in Petoskey, you are kidding yourself.”

  “I’ve made it clear to your sister—”

  “Jon,” my mom said. “Not now.”

  Dad stood his ground at the door. My mom finally took the strap off his shoulder and set the bag down. He must have felt emasculated, because the next thing I knew my dad was spewing more swear words than a comedian on a cable special and he was slamming the door. Mom started crying. This is where Jess usually stepped in, but she’s wasn’t there anymore and Dad was out in the car laying his hand on the horn.

  So I went to my mom. I didn’t really know what to say. I probably should have just said, “I love you, Mommy,” to let her know she wasn’t alone. I stood in front of her. That’s all I did. I just stood there. I can’t remember the last time my mom held me or I hugged her. Mom laughed and shed more tears. She tried to stop crying, but she laughed and it became tears. Dad kept honking the horn. It was this weird cycle of noise. Finally she just walked out the door. I watched the car roll down the driveway. Dad drove away from the house.

  Twenty minutes later, Lane arrived. We never left. We spent the next three days at my parents’ house. We never had sex—I was still reluctant after Jess’s experience. Instead, we did other things. By the second day, we pretty much just watched cable or some of Lane’s DVDs. We sat around in our underwear, smoking some of Lane’s grass, and eating pizza.

  The phone rang a lot that first full day. It tapered off. The answering machine was full, so when it picked up, the caller, undoubtedly my mom, just hung up.

  On the morning of the third day, my parents came home. It was early in the morning. I could see the sun outside my bedroom window. It was shining practically right into my eyes. Lane was asleep next to me, his back against mine. We weren’t wearing any clothes.

  A door closed downstairs.

  “Robs?” It was my dad.

  I shook Lane. “Lane, get up.” He mumbled. I shook him again, this time harder. “Lane, get up now.”

  Lane rolled over. “What the hell, Robbie?”

  “My parents are home.”

  “Shit.”

  Lane jumped up just as my dad threw open my door. There was no, “Oops, sorry!” look on my dad’s face; his expression went from concerned to pissed just that quick. He reached for Lane with one hand and was getting ready to deck him with the other. Lane ducked, but my dad managed to get him into a headlock. He started jerking Lane around the room.

  “I ought to beat the shit out of you,” he kept saying. “I ought to beat the living shit out of you.” I’m not sure if he meant me or Lane.

  “Come on, man, I’m naked,” Lane yelled. “This is weirding me out.”

  “Daddy, stop,” I said. My voice cracked. I was crying, and I never cried. At least not around my parents.

  This went on for another few minutes until we all heard my mom. “Put your clothes on,” she said above all of us. We all three looked at her. I had never seen such remorse, such disgust, such anger on her face before.

  “When you get dressed, young man, you will leave this house. You will never set foot in here again.” My mom turned and left. My dad practica
lly growled at Lane as he shoved him out of the way.

  “Shit,” Lane said. “That was assault, man. You assaulted me.”

  “Go ahead and call the cops. While you’re telling them I assaulted you, you can also explain the weed that’s inside your bag downstairs. Get your clothes on,” my dad said.

  I dressed under my blankets.

  It was the last time I was ever in my house. Their house. Before the day was done, Jess had picked me up and moved me to her apartment in the city.

  Lane eventually made his way into the city. We had been tweeting to keep in touch. He came into the sub shop where I had just started working. I shared my break meal with him while we sat outside so we could eat and smoke.

  “Did you hear what happened down in the Everglades?” he asked.

  He tells me about some swampers that were out gator hunting when they found what they thought was a dead body floating face down in the water. They got their boat over to it and shined their spotlights on it. One guy reached in to roll it over and the body—thing grabbed his arm. They couldn’t get the attacker off of the guy. It tried to drag him into the swamp. The one hunter who wasn’t being held fired a pistol at the attacker. The bullets, he said, went right through the attacker’s body, and the attacker kept holding the other guy, eventually sinking its teeth into the arm of the guy. The guy holding the gun started clubbing the zombie, but it was too late. He tossed the gun away and picked up a machete they used to cut their way through denser spots. He said he had two choices: chop off the zombie’s head or his buddy’s arm. He had a better chance with his buddy’s arm, so he hacked it off. The creature receded into the swamp, the arm still in its teeth.

  I couldn’t believe Lane at the time. I mean, it sounded like something made for late night cable back in the ’80s. Lane was always finding a vintage DVD for us to watch. I told him he should write the screenplay for the Sci-Fi channel.

  When he showed it to me on his phone, I still thought it was faked. It got so that it was easy for people to make low-budget movies. I just figured this was another Paranormal Activity rip-off.